The Art Of Ethnic Cleansing

By Moorthy Muthuswamy, May 2000

In 1947, while the Indian State under Gandhi and Nehru stopped the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from India, Pakistan’s government worked overtime to ensure that Hindus and Sikhs were driven out to India!   Pak repeated these acts subsequently, Bangladesh in 1971 and Kashmir in 1989. Most of the remainder, after surviving this initial onslaught, were eventually driven out to India in the subsequent years. Still, it is certainly conceivable that majority of Pakistan’s Muslims did not wish non-Muslim ethnic cleansing. 

How and why did the minorities get ethnic cleansed? It started with Pakistan being officially made Islamic followed by a gradual implementation of Koranic laws that governed an Arabic society 800 years ago! Many of these laws constitutionally treated non-Muslims as second class citizens. For instance, in the Court of Law, evidence of a non-Muslim is considered less equal than of a Muslim. Non-Muslims are forbidden to occupy certain governmental positions. Blasphemy laws are used to imprison, destroy non-Muslim families and confiscate their property simply on the basis of an allegation by a Muslim. Non-Muslims don’t have equal voting rights in Pakistan. All of this implies a constitutionally organized repression of non-Muslims in an Islamic country like Pakistan. The minorities were left with no choice but to leave for India. Pakistan’s government and the ruling class knew this but could care less.  All of this makes Pakistan’s government responsible for non-Muslim ethnic cleansing. This shows the power and influence of extremist elements in an Islamic majority country in the sub-continent. 

Backed by this 50 year history of hard evidence, one can see the implications of unabated Muslim population growth in India. However in India, Muslims are not constitutionally treated as second class citizens. Nevertheless, recently, in a large gathering of Muslims in Delhi, India’s most influential Muslim leader, the Imam of Delhi, Mr. Bukhari warned India about Muslim "oppression". Not-so-incidentally, "oppression" is the catchword Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pak sponsored terrorist organization in Kashmir uses as a justification to "liberate" all of Indian sub-continent  Muslims (details at http://www.dawacenter.com/kashmir/map.html), not only in entire India, also Srilanka and Nepal!. Here, "liberation" is to be understood as extermination/conversion to Islam and or ethnic cleansing of ALL non-Muslims.